Changes continue to come to the world of Captain Marvel — at both DC and Marvel. A couple weeks ago we brought you the story that DC would be throwing in the towel and renaming their Captain Marvel, Shazam. Long story short, DC’s Captain Marvel was, for a time, the most popular superhero in the world, but original publisher Fawcett let the Captain Marvel copyright lapse in the late 50s — DC would revive the character in the 70s, but in the interim, Marvel created their own version of Captain Marvel.

In order to retain their claim on the Captain Marvel name Marvel needs to publish comics starring their version of the character on a fairly regular basis, which is problematic, because their version of the Captain Marvel kind of sucks. Over the years there’s been six or seven Captain Marvel series and almost as many different versions of the character. Marvel’s poured a lot of effort into their Captain Marvel, but no version of the character has really caught on in a big way.

Well, Marvel’s going to take another crack at the whole Captain Marvel thing, and this time they’re doing something smart. Rather than create another new Captain from scratch, they’re instead “promoting” the popular Ms. Marvel into the role. It’s a somewhat odd situation — Ms. Marvel was originally introduced in a Captain Marvel story, but would quickly outstrip him in popularity and become more associated with the Avengers and X-Men, and yet now she’s going back and taking on the name of a character she outgrew and outshone.

You can check out some more art featuring the new Captain Marvel after the jump…

While I liked Ms. Marvel’s old costume for purely masculine reasons, it’s probably practical to switch a superhero who deserves a little respect into a suit that covers more than 1/4 of each butt cheek.

This is also Carol Danvers’ fourth super hero name. Fitting then that she get the Captain Marvel moniker. Take a hero that has been at least four different people and give that name to a hero who has had three other hero names.